Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
But, if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed, it’s even more true that it changes the observer. (SM)
She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education ... (SM)
... she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness. (SM)
It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It’s more interesting, and doesn’t take so long. (SM)
The old bards said they got better as they got older, although the old men tend to say this sort of thing regardless of daily experience. (SM)
And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will reform itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world. (SM)
CONSIDER THE SIZE OF THE ROOM ...
... which went on to infinity, or as near infinity as makes no difference. In fact it was about a mile. That's big for a room, whereas infinity you can hardly see. (SM)
He liked black. It went with anything. It went with everything, sooner or later. (SM)
Miss Eulalie Butts and her colleague, Miss Delcross, had founded the college on the astonishing idea that, since gels had nothing much to do until someone married them, they might as well occupy themselves with learning things. (SM)
...Miss Butts sincerely believed that there were no basic differences between boys and gels.
At least, none worth talking about. (SM)
…she believed in encouraging logical thought and a healthy enquiring mind among the nascent young women in her care, a course of action which is, as far as wisdom is concerned, on a par with going alligator-hunting in a cardboard boat during the sinking season. (SM)
The question seldom addressed is where Medusa has snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting off the top of the deodorant bottle. (SM)
Susan hated Literature. She’d much prefer to read a good book. (SM)
She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept trying to interfere with it. (SM)
'But alcohol debilitated the body and is a poison to the soul.'
SOUNDS GOOD TO ME. (SM)
People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too. (SM)
'What do you do with them?' he said.
'I bang them together.'
'And then what?'
'What do you mean, "And then what?"'
'What do you do after you've banged them together?'
'I bang them together again,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers. (SM)
A drink from the Ankh would quite probably rob a man of his memory, or at least cause things to happen to him that he would in no account wish to recall. (SM)
The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. (SM)
He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. (SM)
It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like mushrooms after rain, Mr Clete.
Hat. Hat. Hat. Mr Clete laughed at things in inverse proportion to the actual humour of the situation. (SM)
Musicians were often short on money; it was one definition of a musician. (SM)
Folk music was not approved of in Llamedos, and the singing of it was rigorously discouraged; it was felt that anyone espying a fair young maiden one morning in May was entitled to take whatever steps they considered appropriate without someone writing it down. (SM)
Dwarfs were said to be the keenest of financial negotiators, second only in acumen and effrontery to little old ladies. (SM)
'We haven't even practised together properlly,' said Imp.
'We'll practice as we go along,' said Glod. 'Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.' (SM)
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they'd have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in battle against crossbows and broadswords. (SM)
‘Look,’ said Susan, ‘I’d just like you to know that I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe there’s a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.’
‘He’s standing in front of you.’
‘That’s no reason to believe it.’
‘I can see you’ve certainly had a proper education.’ (SM)
There are the people of the day, and the creatures of the night.
And it’s important to remember that the creatures of the night aren’t simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes a lot more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide. (SM)
…he didn’t have a sense of humour and, like most people without a sense of humour, prided himself on the sense of humour he hadn’t, in fact, got. (SM)
Geography consisted of the flora of the Sto Plains1, chief exports of the Sto Plains2, and the fauna of the Sto Plains3.
1Cabbages.
2Cabbages.
3Anything that ate cabbages and didn’t mind not having any friends. (SM)
There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shoveling manure in a stable. (SM)
... the Hogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings, and ham to all children who have been good. He says ‘Ho ho ho’ a lot. Children who have been bad get a bag full of bloody bones (it’s these little details which tell you it’s a tale for the little folk). There’s a song about him. It begins: You’d Better Watch Out... (SM)
He was vaguely aware that childhood was a tricky business, especially toward the end. There was all the business with pimples and bits of your body having a mind of their own. (SM)
The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up. (SM)
The Reader had a theory that all the really good books in any building - at least, all the really funny ones* - gravitate to a pile in the privy but no one ever has time to read all of them, or even knows how they came to be there. His research was causing extreme constipation and a queue outside the door every morning.
*The ones with cartoons about cows and dogs. And captions like: ‘As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day.’ (SM)
The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain. (SM)
The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. Her parents had sent her there for that reason.
They'd assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling people about self-defence so that no-one would ever attack them. (SM)
Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive the notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards. (SM)
'You've never been musical, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'It's one of your good points.' (SM)
Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn't have to experience it. (SM)
Parents were never young. They were merely waiting to become Parents. (SM)
CALLING SOMETHING A FIGURE OF SPEECH DOESN’T MEAN IT’S NOT TRUE. (SM)
Deafness doesn’t prevent composers hearing the music. It prevents them hearing the distractions. (SM)
Buddy tried to look as inconspicuous as a human can look if he is accompanying a dwarf with a big horn, an ape, and a troll carrying a piano in a bag. (SM)
... for a dwarf the whole point of having a pile of gold was, well, to have a pile of gold. (SM)
'In my experience,' said Glod, 'what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.' (SM)
... Ridcully believed that everything had come into being by chance or, in the particular case of the Dean, out of spite. (SM)
Ridcully smacked his lips loudly.
‘Ah, we certainly know what goes into good beer in Ankh-Morpork,’ he said.
The wizards nodded. They certainly did. That’s why they were drinking gin and tonic. (SM)
He was extremely good at listening. He created a kind of mental suction. People told him things just to avoid the silence. (SM)
...the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skin, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. (SM)
‘mumblemumblemumble,’ said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause. (SM)
‘I thought you were just happy to get paid,’ said Buddy.
‘Right. Right. But I’m even happier to get paid a lot.’ (SM)
‘Students?’
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university…’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial. (SM)
Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin. (SM)
... Dwarfs have thousands of words for 'gold' but will use any of them in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn't belong to them. (SM)
Troll gambling is even simpler than Australian gambling. One of the most popular games is One Up, which consists of throwing a coin in the air and betting on whether it will come down again. (SM)
‘…well if you could get music in boxes you wouldn’t need musicians any more.’
Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. (SM)
Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business. (SM)
There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It’s like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It’s seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there’s nothing much left but a faint smell. (SM)
‘The money’s not important? You keep on saying that! What kind of musician are you?’ (SM)
‘It’s not how you finish that matters,’ said Buddy. ‘It’s how you get there.’ (SM)
The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species ‘female’ but have never expected to get this close to one. (SM)
Wizards were rumored to be wise - in fact, that’s where the word came from.*
*From the Old wys-ars, lit.: one who, at bottom, is very smart. (SM)
Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time. (SM)
He was, by and large, against the idea of a permanent office. On the positive side it made him easier to find, but on the negative side it made him easier to find. The success of Dibbler’s commercial strategy hinged on him being able to find customers, not the other way around. (SM)
The Patrician was a pragmatist. He’d never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn’t work, however, got broken. (SM)
Expecting Dibbler not to think about things concerning money was like expecting rocks not to think about gravity. (SM)
‘And these young me- people are clearly very successful,’ he added. This obviously carried a lot of weight with the mayor, as it does with many people. No-one likes a poor thief. (SM)
The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn’t be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well. (SM)
Crash hefted his guitar and played a chord.
‘My word!’ said Ridcully.
‘Sir?’
‘That sounded exactly like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn-up bum.’ (SM)
‘Of course, just because we’ve heard a spine-chilling blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn’t automatically mean there’s anything wrong.’ (SM)
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, old chap,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You don’t know where it might take you.’
‘Don’t care,’ said the Dean. He still didn’t take his eyes of the thing.
‘I mean, it’s not of this world,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘I’ve been of this world for more than seventy years,’ said the Dean, ‘and it is extremely boring.’ (SM)
There is no such thing as a whisper in Ankh-Morpork when the sum involved had the word 'thousand' in it somewhere; people could hear you think kind of money in Ankh Morpork. (SM)
Death was used to travelling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already. (SM)
YOU’VE ALWAYS KNOWN. YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. SO DO I. BUT YOU ARE HUMAN AND YOUR MIND REBELS FOR YOUR OWN SAKE. SOMETHING GOES ACROSS, THOUGH. DREAMS, PERHAPS. PREMONITIONS. FFELINGS. SOME SHADOWS ARE SO LONG THEY ARRIVE BEFORE THE LIGHT. (SM)
Susan stared at him.
The blue glow in Death’s eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and the darkness beyond...
...which went on and on, forever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone. (SM)
Miss Butt’s mouth opened and shut. And Susan realized that the woman was actually quite short. She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. (SM)
She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education ... (SM)
... she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness. (SM)
It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It’s more interesting, and doesn’t take so long. (SM)
The old bards said they got better as they got older, although the old men tend to say this sort of thing regardless of daily experience. (SM)
And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will reform itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world. (SM)
CONSIDER THE SIZE OF THE ROOM ...
... which went on to infinity, or as near infinity as makes no difference. In fact it was about a mile. That's big for a room, whereas infinity you can hardly see. (SM)
He liked black. It went with anything. It went with everything, sooner or later. (SM)
Miss Eulalie Butts and her colleague, Miss Delcross, had founded the college on the astonishing idea that, since gels had nothing much to do until someone married them, they might as well occupy themselves with learning things. (SM)
...Miss Butts sincerely believed that there were no basic differences between boys and gels.
At least, none worth talking about. (SM)
…she believed in encouraging logical thought and a healthy enquiring mind among the nascent young women in her care, a course of action which is, as far as wisdom is concerned, on a par with going alligator-hunting in a cardboard boat during the sinking season. (SM)
The question seldom addressed is where Medusa has snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting off the top of the deodorant bottle. (SM)
Susan hated Literature. She’d much prefer to read a good book. (SM)
She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept trying to interfere with it. (SM)
'But alcohol debilitated the body and is a poison to the soul.'
SOUNDS GOOD TO ME. (SM)
People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too. (SM)
'What do you do with them?' he said.
'I bang them together.'
'And then what?'
'What do you mean, "And then what?"'
'What do you do after you've banged them together?'
'I bang them together again,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers. (SM)
A drink from the Ankh would quite probably rob a man of his memory, or at least cause things to happen to him that he would in no account wish to recall. (SM)
The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. (SM)
He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. (SM)
It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like mushrooms after rain, Mr Clete.
Hat. Hat. Hat. Mr Clete laughed at things in inverse proportion to the actual humour of the situation. (SM)
Musicians were often short on money; it was one definition of a musician. (SM)
Folk music was not approved of in Llamedos, and the singing of it was rigorously discouraged; it was felt that anyone espying a fair young maiden one morning in May was entitled to take whatever steps they considered appropriate without someone writing it down. (SM)
Dwarfs were said to be the keenest of financial negotiators, second only in acumen and effrontery to little old ladies. (SM)
'We haven't even practised together properlly,' said Imp.
'We'll practice as we go along,' said Glod. 'Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.' (SM)
The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they'd have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in battle against crossbows and broadswords. (SM)
‘Look,’ said Susan, ‘I’d just like you to know that I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe there’s a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.’
‘He’s standing in front of you.’
‘That’s no reason to believe it.’
‘I can see you’ve certainly had a proper education.’ (SM)
There are the people of the day, and the creatures of the night.
And it’s important to remember that the creatures of the night aren’t simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes a lot more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide. (SM)
…he didn’t have a sense of humour and, like most people without a sense of humour, prided himself on the sense of humour he hadn’t, in fact, got. (SM)
Geography consisted of the flora of the Sto Plains1, chief exports of the Sto Plains2, and the fauna of the Sto Plains3.
1Cabbages.
2Cabbages.
3Anything that ate cabbages and didn’t mind not having any friends. (SM)
There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shoveling manure in a stable. (SM)
... the Hogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings, and ham to all children who have been good. He says ‘Ho ho ho’ a lot. Children who have been bad get a bag full of bloody bones (it’s these little details which tell you it’s a tale for the little folk). There’s a song about him. It begins: You’d Better Watch Out... (SM)
He was vaguely aware that childhood was a tricky business, especially toward the end. There was all the business with pimples and bits of your body having a mind of their own. (SM)
The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up. (SM)
The Reader had a theory that all the really good books in any building - at least, all the really funny ones* - gravitate to a pile in the privy but no one ever has time to read all of them, or even knows how they came to be there. His research was causing extreme constipation and a queue outside the door every morning.
*The ones with cartoons about cows and dogs. And captions like: ‘As soon as he saw the duck, Elmer knew it was going to be a bad day.’ (SM)
The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain. (SM)
The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. Her parents had sent her there for that reason.
They'd assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling people about self-defence so that no-one would ever attack them. (SM)
Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive the notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards. (SM)
'You've never been musical, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'It's one of your good points.' (SM)
Dwarfs respected learning, provided they didn't have to experience it. (SM)
Parents were never young. They were merely waiting to become Parents. (SM)
CALLING SOMETHING A FIGURE OF SPEECH DOESN’T MEAN IT’S NOT TRUE. (SM)
Deafness doesn’t prevent composers hearing the music. It prevents them hearing the distractions. (SM)
Buddy tried to look as inconspicuous as a human can look if he is accompanying a dwarf with a big horn, an ape, and a troll carrying a piano in a bag. (SM)
... for a dwarf the whole point of having a pile of gold was, well, to have a pile of gold. (SM)
'In my experience,' said Glod, 'what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.' (SM)
... Ridcully believed that everything had come into being by chance or, in the particular case of the Dean, out of spite. (SM)
Ridcully smacked his lips loudly.
‘Ah, we certainly know what goes into good beer in Ankh-Morpork,’ he said.
The wizards nodded. They certainly did. That’s why they were drinking gin and tonic. (SM)
He was extremely good at listening. He created a kind of mental suction. People told him things just to avoid the silence. (SM)
...the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skin, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. (SM)
‘mumblemumblemumble,’ said the Dean defiantly, a rebel without a pause. (SM)
‘I thought you were just happy to get paid,’ said Buddy.
‘Right. Right. But I’m even happier to get paid a lot.’ (SM)
‘Students?’
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university…’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial. (SM)
Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin. (SM)
... Dwarfs have thousands of words for 'gold' but will use any of them in an emergency, such as when they see some gold that doesn't belong to them. (SM)
Troll gambling is even simpler than Australian gambling. One of the most popular games is One Up, which consists of throwing a coin in the air and betting on whether it will come down again. (SM)
‘…well if you could get music in boxes you wouldn’t need musicians any more.’
Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. (SM)
Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business. (SM)
There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It’s like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It’s seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there’s nothing much left but a faint smell. (SM)
‘The money’s not important? You keep on saying that! What kind of musician are you?’ (SM)
‘It’s not how you finish that matters,’ said Buddy. ‘It’s how you get there.’ (SM)
The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species ‘female’ but have never expected to get this close to one. (SM)
Wizards were rumored to be wise - in fact, that’s where the word came from.*
*From the Old wys-ars, lit.: one who, at bottom, is very smart. (SM)
Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time. (SM)
He was, by and large, against the idea of a permanent office. On the positive side it made him easier to find, but on the negative side it made him easier to find. The success of Dibbler’s commercial strategy hinged on him being able to find customers, not the other way around. (SM)
The Patrician was a pragmatist. He’d never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn’t work, however, got broken. (SM)
Expecting Dibbler not to think about things concerning money was like expecting rocks not to think about gravity. (SM)
‘And these young me- people are clearly very successful,’ he added. This obviously carried a lot of weight with the mayor, as it does with many people. No-one likes a poor thief. (SM)
The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn’t be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well. (SM)
Crash hefted his guitar and played a chord.
‘My word!’ said Ridcully.
‘Sir?’
‘That sounded exactly like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn-up bum.’ (SM)
‘Of course, just because we’ve heard a spine-chilling blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn’t automatically mean there’s anything wrong.’ (SM)
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, old chap,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You don’t know where it might take you.’
‘Don’t care,’ said the Dean. He still didn’t take his eyes of the thing.
‘I mean, it’s not of this world,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘I’ve been of this world for more than seventy years,’ said the Dean, ‘and it is extremely boring.’ (SM)
There is no such thing as a whisper in Ankh-Morpork when the sum involved had the word 'thousand' in it somewhere; people could hear you think kind of money in Ankh Morpork. (SM)
Death was used to travelling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already. (SM)
YOU’VE ALWAYS KNOWN. YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING. SO DO I. BUT YOU ARE HUMAN AND YOUR MIND REBELS FOR YOUR OWN SAKE. SOMETHING GOES ACROSS, THOUGH. DREAMS, PERHAPS. PREMONITIONS. FFELINGS. SOME SHADOWS ARE SO LONG THEY ARRIVE BEFORE THE LIGHT. (SM)
Susan stared at him.
The blue glow in Death’s eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and the darkness beyond...
...which went on and on, forever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone. (SM)
Miss Butt’s mouth opened and shut. And Susan realized that the woman was actually quite short. She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. (SM)
